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A guide to ICS
In response to Carolus Rex's nomination in the "Damn, I didn't know this" thread ( http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HT...tml?date=14:36 ), here is a rough draft of a guide to ICS. Comments, criticisms, and additions are welcome.
Edited 8-21-00 to provide more details about maintaining happiness with HG and building roads for trade.
The easiest way to win at Civilization II is to build lots of cities. The extreme form of this strategy is generally known by the acronym ICS, which stands for Infinite Cities Sleaze, Sprawl, or Strategy, depending on your viewpoint. Although some people hate this technique, it makes the game easier by decreasing the number of decisions you have to make. One thing that makes Civilization II difficult for new players is the staggering number of choices in the game. Do you build military units, settlers, trade units, diplomats, city improvements, or a wonder of the world? If you follow the ICS strategy, you eliminate one of the choices entirely, and can choose from the other options based on a simple pattern.
The cornerstone of this strategy is: don't build ANY improvements in any of your cities (with the exception of a few key Wonders). Build lots of small cities instead of a few big ones. Just keep building troops, settlers, and diplomats, and send them out to build new cities and take away your opponents'.
Here are the details: build your cities close together, since each city will have only 2-3 squares being worked. Initially, build a warrior to garrison each city, then a horsemen to explore. After building these two, switch to settlers. Keep your research at the max, and get to Monarchy as soon as possible. With no starting techs, your research order should be: Horseback Riding, Ceremonial Burial, Alphabet, Code of Laws, and Monarchy.
At Deity level, you'll need a second warrior in some cities to keep order after you build your fifth city under Despotism, or your seventh under Monarchy. By the time you expand beyond eight cities in Despotism, or twelve in Monarchy, you'd better have built the Hanging Gardens (see below). Keep building cities; by the time you have 24, the Hanging Gardens and one warrior will keep a size 2 city out of disorder. Note: these numbers are for a small map; you will be able to build more cities on a larger map before suffering disorder. Another note: to keep lots of cities happy with Hanging Gardens, you may have to move a garrison unit out of the city. A city may riot with two garrison troops, but be content with one. This is counterintuitive, but it works.
An ideal city site has access to a high-food square (whales, grassland, oasis, wheat, or fish), and one or two high-shield squares (forest, iron, peat, coal). At size one, put your worker on the high-food square: your goal is to grow to size 2 as quickly as possible. Once the city reaches size two, arrange your workers to maximize the shields produced by the city. Your goal is to build a settler as quickly as possible; once the city produces a settler and shrinks to size one, it repeats the cycle of growth and settler production. Don't use the settler to irrigate or mine squares; instead, move it to a good city site and build a new city. It's useful to build a network of roads that connects your cities; this eases travel for future settlers and your counterstrike forces. It's also a good idea to build roads where they will provide extra trade (on grassland, plains, or desert squares, or trade specials).
If you see a good special square (wine, buffalo, spice), build a city there to take advantage of it. Another good place to build a city is on a river square (instant bridge, improved defense, and increased trade). Building a city on a hill or mountain will produce an instant road in that square, saving you several turns of settler labor. Since a city square will always be irrigated and roaded, and will always produce at least one shield, some squares can be improved substantially by building a city on it. The following table specifies the bonuses given by building a city on any square:
+1 food, +1 shield, +1 trade - non-shield grassland, furs, wine
+1 food, +1 trade - desert, shield grassland, plains, buffalo, gold, oaisis, desert oil, wheat
+1 food, +1 shield - hills
+1 shield, +1 trade - fruit, gems, spice
+1 food - mountains, tundra, coal, musk ox, iron, glacier oil
+1 shield - jungle, swamp
+1 trade - ivory, silk, any river square
no effect - forest, glacier, pheasant, peat
Do lots of exploring, revealing the map and aggressively searching for huts and new city sites. Fortify some units on good defensive terrain to keep the other guys' scouts out of your territory. Keep a few horsemen and/or diplomats close to home to defend against barbarians and other intruders. Try to attack barbarian archers instead of defending against them - despite everything you read in the manual and help files, barbarian archers have a defense of 1 and can be easily beaten by horsemen on most terrain.
If you are playing against the computer, demand tribute from any AI civ that you can reach by land. They will be intimidated by your large number of cities and military units, and will generally pay immediately. Demand tribute every turn; when the AIs accumulate enough money, they will pay up. If an AI civ declares war on you, they will usually pay for peace within one or two turns. If they still won't pay, take one of their cities and they'll start to see reason.
If you are in a multiplayer game, make sure your border guards are stacked with another unit to prevent bribery. After the early game, your exploring units should also be stacked. A good defensive unit and a diplomat make a good exploring team in the mid game - if you stay on mountains and hills your explorers will be relatively safe from attack; the diplomat can help the team maneuver around hostile units and cities.
You'll have lots of money, because you aren't spending anything on upkeep. Keep a small reserve (100-200 gold) for emergencies; then use the money to rushbuild settlers in cities that are about to grow to size 3, or to build military units or diplomats in trouble spots, or to bribe hostile units. It's also useful to "even out" your shields. If a city is producing five shields per turn toward a settler and has 17 shields in the box, change the production in that city to horsemen, rush-build them, then change production back to settlers. This saves you a turn of production, and two wasted shields, at the cost of only 6 gold pieces.
After Monarchy, your research should focus on Trade. When you get it, switch your research to Pottery (if you haven't found it in a hut, traded for it, or stolen it already), and switch four cities to building caravans. Use them to build Hanging Gardens. This wonder will allow you to build as many small cities as you want without needing any happiness improvements or wonders.
After building the Hanging Gardens, your next choices depend on your position. If you're on an island, you need Map Making. In a multiplayer game, you'll want the Great Wall or Sun Tzu's War Academy, so set your research goal to Masonry or Feudalism, respectively. Otherwise, I like to go for Invention. This lets you build Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade all your warriors and horsemen to good units. Once you have Invention, you face a choice of going for Gunpowder or Democracy. Each is a valid choice: gunpowder upgrades your warriors to musketeers, who are very powerful both offensively and defensively against pre-gunpowder units. Democracy lets you build the Statue of Liberty, which gives invaluable early access to the two ideal ICS governments: Communism and Fundamentalism. Communism allows you to keep your cities happy with double martial law. It eliminates corruption, waste, and the extra unhappiness from "too many" cities (riot factor). Fundamentalism eliminates any happiness worries completely, and allows a huge support-free army. Its major disadvantage lies in its research penalty. Generally, I use Communism for research; when I've discovered some good military techs (usually Gunpowder and Leadership are more than sufficient). I switch to Fundamentalism and start cranking out the units. Note that the combination of Fundamentalism, lots of cities, and one or both of the global happy wonders (Michelangelo's Chapel or Bach's Cathedral) will produce an enormous income in tithes.
One of the reasons ICS works so well is that each city gets a "free" worker for the city square, that is, a size one city gets to work two squares. Also, corruption and waste are less for a small city. And, of course, no improvements mean you don't have to spend shields building them nor pay maintenance on them. You can expand exponentially by building lots of settlers: your first city builds one, your two cities build two, your four cities build four.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 21, 2000).]
Edited 8-21-00 to provide more details about maintaining happiness with HG and building roads for trade.
The easiest way to win at Civilization II is to build lots of cities. The extreme form of this strategy is generally known by the acronym ICS, which stands for Infinite Cities Sleaze, Sprawl, or Strategy, depending on your viewpoint. Although some people hate this technique, it makes the game easier by decreasing the number of decisions you have to make. One thing that makes Civilization II difficult for new players is the staggering number of choices in the game. Do you build military units, settlers, trade units, diplomats, city improvements, or a wonder of the world? If you follow the ICS strategy, you eliminate one of the choices entirely, and can choose from the other options based on a simple pattern.
The cornerstone of this strategy is: don't build ANY improvements in any of your cities (with the exception of a few key Wonders). Build lots of small cities instead of a few big ones. Just keep building troops, settlers, and diplomats, and send them out to build new cities and take away your opponents'.
Here are the details: build your cities close together, since each city will have only 2-3 squares being worked. Initially, build a warrior to garrison each city, then a horsemen to explore. After building these two, switch to settlers. Keep your research at the max, and get to Monarchy as soon as possible. With no starting techs, your research order should be: Horseback Riding, Ceremonial Burial, Alphabet, Code of Laws, and Monarchy.
At Deity level, you'll need a second warrior in some cities to keep order after you build your fifth city under Despotism, or your seventh under Monarchy. By the time you expand beyond eight cities in Despotism, or twelve in Monarchy, you'd better have built the Hanging Gardens (see below). Keep building cities; by the time you have 24, the Hanging Gardens and one warrior will keep a size 2 city out of disorder. Note: these numbers are for a small map; you will be able to build more cities on a larger map before suffering disorder. Another note: to keep lots of cities happy with Hanging Gardens, you may have to move a garrison unit out of the city. A city may riot with two garrison troops, but be content with one. This is counterintuitive, but it works.
An ideal city site has access to a high-food square (whales, grassland, oasis, wheat, or fish), and one or two high-shield squares (forest, iron, peat, coal). At size one, put your worker on the high-food square: your goal is to grow to size 2 as quickly as possible. Once the city reaches size two, arrange your workers to maximize the shields produced by the city. Your goal is to build a settler as quickly as possible; once the city produces a settler and shrinks to size one, it repeats the cycle of growth and settler production. Don't use the settler to irrigate or mine squares; instead, move it to a good city site and build a new city. It's useful to build a network of roads that connects your cities; this eases travel for future settlers and your counterstrike forces. It's also a good idea to build roads where they will provide extra trade (on grassland, plains, or desert squares, or trade specials).
If you see a good special square (wine, buffalo, spice), build a city there to take advantage of it. Another good place to build a city is on a river square (instant bridge, improved defense, and increased trade). Building a city on a hill or mountain will produce an instant road in that square, saving you several turns of settler labor. Since a city square will always be irrigated and roaded, and will always produce at least one shield, some squares can be improved substantially by building a city on it. The following table specifies the bonuses given by building a city on any square:
+1 food, +1 shield, +1 trade - non-shield grassland, furs, wine
+1 food, +1 trade - desert, shield grassland, plains, buffalo, gold, oaisis, desert oil, wheat
+1 food, +1 shield - hills
+1 shield, +1 trade - fruit, gems, spice
+1 food - mountains, tundra, coal, musk ox, iron, glacier oil
+1 shield - jungle, swamp
+1 trade - ivory, silk, any river square
no effect - forest, glacier, pheasant, peat
Do lots of exploring, revealing the map and aggressively searching for huts and new city sites. Fortify some units on good defensive terrain to keep the other guys' scouts out of your territory. Keep a few horsemen and/or diplomats close to home to defend against barbarians and other intruders. Try to attack barbarian archers instead of defending against them - despite everything you read in the manual and help files, barbarian archers have a defense of 1 and can be easily beaten by horsemen on most terrain.
If you are playing against the computer, demand tribute from any AI civ that you can reach by land. They will be intimidated by your large number of cities and military units, and will generally pay immediately. Demand tribute every turn; when the AIs accumulate enough money, they will pay up. If an AI civ declares war on you, they will usually pay for peace within one or two turns. If they still won't pay, take one of their cities and they'll start to see reason.
If you are in a multiplayer game, make sure your border guards are stacked with another unit to prevent bribery. After the early game, your exploring units should also be stacked. A good defensive unit and a diplomat make a good exploring team in the mid game - if you stay on mountains and hills your explorers will be relatively safe from attack; the diplomat can help the team maneuver around hostile units and cities.
You'll have lots of money, because you aren't spending anything on upkeep. Keep a small reserve (100-200 gold) for emergencies; then use the money to rushbuild settlers in cities that are about to grow to size 3, or to build military units or diplomats in trouble spots, or to bribe hostile units. It's also useful to "even out" your shields. If a city is producing five shields per turn toward a settler and has 17 shields in the box, change the production in that city to horsemen, rush-build them, then change production back to settlers. This saves you a turn of production, and two wasted shields, at the cost of only 6 gold pieces.
After Monarchy, your research should focus on Trade. When you get it, switch your research to Pottery (if you haven't found it in a hut, traded for it, or stolen it already), and switch four cities to building caravans. Use them to build Hanging Gardens. This wonder will allow you to build as many small cities as you want without needing any happiness improvements or wonders.
After building the Hanging Gardens, your next choices depend on your position. If you're on an island, you need Map Making. In a multiplayer game, you'll want the Great Wall or Sun Tzu's War Academy, so set your research goal to Masonry or Feudalism, respectively. Otherwise, I like to go for Invention. This lets you build Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade all your warriors and horsemen to good units. Once you have Invention, you face a choice of going for Gunpowder or Democracy. Each is a valid choice: gunpowder upgrades your warriors to musketeers, who are very powerful both offensively and defensively against pre-gunpowder units. Democracy lets you build the Statue of Liberty, which gives invaluable early access to the two ideal ICS governments: Communism and Fundamentalism. Communism allows you to keep your cities happy with double martial law. It eliminates corruption, waste, and the extra unhappiness from "too many" cities (riot factor). Fundamentalism eliminates any happiness worries completely, and allows a huge support-free army. Its major disadvantage lies in its research penalty. Generally, I use Communism for research; when I've discovered some good military techs (usually Gunpowder and Leadership are more than sufficient). I switch to Fundamentalism and start cranking out the units. Note that the combination of Fundamentalism, lots of cities, and one or both of the global happy wonders (Michelangelo's Chapel or Bach's Cathedral) will produce an enormous income in tithes.
One of the reasons ICS works so well is that each city gets a "free" worker for the city square, that is, a size one city gets to work two squares. Also, corruption and waste are less for a small city. And, of course, no improvements mean you don't have to spend shields building them nor pay maintenance on them. You can expand exponentially by building lots of settlers: your first city builds one, your two cities build two, your four cities build four.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 21, 2000).]
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